All relationships are different.  We want to have good relationships with co-workers, after all – those are the people we spend the most time with each week.  We want to have good relationships with customers since they’re the ones that provide the revenue and inflows that allow us to have our jobs.

However, what builds credibility and goodwill and trust with co-workers is often different than what does with customers.

Building Goodwill with Co-workers

With co-workers, it’s beneficial to the relationship if we are proactive with providing information, providing input on what the other person’s done or what their plans are, and asking questions.  But since we’re talking relationships, we have to be willing to receive information from them, receive their feedback on us, and be willing to listen to and respond to their questions.  When we recognize what the other person does well to build goodwill with us, and when we try to be respectful and timely in our communications with them, we can build trust and credibility.

Building Goodwill with Customers

With customers, we are typically more knowledgeable than them about a process or a policy or a timeline or a product, so we need to focus on teaching them about processes and expectations upfront.  We want the reality of the experience to match realistic expectations.

Convey confidence to the customer in what we do and in our general knowledge and skillset.  When I said “convey,” it’s not just doing what we said we’d do, but it’s sometimes also telling them what we’ve done on their behalf.  We need to avoid being frustrated with the customers because of their bringing frustration to us, especially given that oftentimes customers are complaining to us about nothing to do with us – they’re complaining about a co-worker, a product, or something that didn’t meet their expectation.

And to build relationships with customers, we have to ensure we’re conveying that we understand them and their situation, providing a little empathy along with hopefully providing a solution.

It’s important to work on relationships with co-workers and customers, to build goodwill, credibility, and trust.  As you do so, remember some of the key distinctions between these important sets people that we work with every day.

Build goodwill with co-workers and customers.

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